One columnist provided a detailed explanation of the "failure" of the Saudization process in the private sector.

"Employers say young Saudi men and women are lazy and are not interested in working and accuse Saudi youth of preferring to stay at home rather than to take a low-paying job that does not befit the social status of a Saudi job seeker," Mohammed Bassnawi wrote.

He called out the program as "fake" explaining that the plan "could create a generation of young men and women who are not interested in finding a job and who prefer to get paid for doing nothing."

Numbers from The General Authority for Statistics (GaStat) expose the extreme differences in the number of expat employees versus Saudi nationals in various sectors.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has been reducing its reliance on expats

The kingdom has passed several orders under the Vision 2030 plan, including one that terminates all contracts pertaining to expatriate workers in governments and ministries within three years and another that nationalizes jobs in shopping malls.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia's Minister of Labor and Social Development issued an order reducing the validity of expat work visas for private sector employees in the country from two years to one year.

In November 2017, the Ministry of Labor and Development arrested a number of expats caught working in nationalized sectors. It also warned violators of deportation.

According to the Saudi Gazette, authorities have apprehended 1.35 million expats in the past 8 months.

Vision 2030 also aims to develop non-oil-related industries, support small and medium enterprises, increase the participation of Saudi women in the workforce, and create a broader investment base in the country.

See also: Major Changes for Saudi women in the past years (Provided by Business Insider)

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.